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We have all heard of memes, and we know the weight they pull in social media. And if you don’t then you have a new homework assignment: knowyourmeme.com

I have seen some Facebook pages and twitter accounts using memes in their regular community management and I think it’s brilliant. People already have a personal connection to internet memes, so why not take advantage of that.

Cypress Mountain is one of my favourite examples, you can’t really be upset about the mountain not being open when they tell you like this.

I took a bit of an educated gamble on the following post, before sending it out I looked at her profile and what she was talking about, luckily there was a couple memes in there, so I knew that she would find my response entertaining.

Before you start using memes on a regular basis make sure you know the whole story behind the meme, so that things don’t end up back firing on you.

11. Don’t use URL Shorteners to Share Links

Proper URLs get 3x higher engagement than their shortened counterparts.

12. Different Audiences Engage at Different Times

Experiment to find the optimum time for your audience. Post at different times to engage different fans. There is a 20% higher engagement rate outside of business hours. Some days are also better than others to post. Travel and hospitality works well towards the end of the week, and engagement rates on Thursdays and Fridays are 18% higher than other days of the week. The less people want to be at work, the more they are on Facebook.

13. Ask Questions

Questions should be placed at the end of a post for a 15% higher engagement rate.3

15. Own your personality

This is probably one of the biggest factors in creating a community that lasts and continually generates positive feedback. The community manager should naturally represent the brand, if your destination was a single person who would it be, that person should be in charge of your online community.

Leading up to The Greatest Outdoor Show On Earth, we helped the Calgary Stampede put together a series of videos aimed at promoting the upcoming Stampede. The videos featured me deep-frying different items – some of it was food, some of it was not edible at all.

The seven videos that were aired received a combined 160,000+ views (I suspect at least 1,000 of those views were from my mom sharing with her friends), and had over 2,700 likes and comments. The videos also generated tens of millions of impressions promoting the Calgary Stampede.

Getting to see the idea evolve, the videos come together, and the great success of the videos was a great learning experience for me.

6. Run Contests to Boost Engagement

People love wining, it doesn’t matter if it’s a sticker or a trip to the Superbowl, people want to win. There are lots of cheap apps that can be used for running contests, just make sure that you are following the Facebook guidelines.

7. Drop in Milestones

Timeline is your brands personal scrapbook, and it’s a great way to tell your own story. Take a little trip to the past and add your big milestones as bragging points.

8. Ask for your Fans Opinions

Whenever you have the chance, ask your community what they think, but beware that the feedback may not always be what you want to hear.

9. Try Posting “Fill in the Blanks”

Make it as easy as possible for fans to comment and urge them to finish a sentence with their own answer.

10. Give Fans Access to Exclusive Info

Use Facebook as your first resource for spreading information, if you can beat newspapers or tv stations to the punch then you know you’re spreading your content at the right speed.

Over the next few weeks I will be posting my 15 Facebook best practices, if you have any best practices you like to follow let me know what they are.

1. Embrace Images

Use imagery to catch users attention and get them interested in what you have to say, you can also show fans what goes on behind the scenes with simple smartphone pictures.

2. Keep it Short

Posts that are 80 characters in length, or less get 27% higher engagement rate. So keep it short and to the point.

3. Make the most of your cover photo

A recent eye-tracking study noted that consumers pay far more attention to the cover photo than any other content on the wall, so put thought into your photo.

Did you know: Covers may not include:

Contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address.

References to Facebook features or actions, such as “Like” or “Share” or an arrow pointing from the cover photo to any of these features.

Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends.”

4. Pay Attention to your Insights

Facebook breaks down your new fans by gender and location to help you get a sense of who you’re talking to on Facebook. It also gives you a great snapshot of what content you put out is getting good feedback and what content is falling through the cracks.

5. Highlight your Best Posts

Take advantage of the “Highlight” option, this works especially well if you share lots of content each week, or you want users to be drawn into certain posts. I like to use landscape style photos with my content so I can easily highlight it.